{"id":26843,"date":"2017-06-23T10:26:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T15:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=26843"},"modified":"2017-06-23T10:26:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T15:26:28","slug":"bill-cosby-and-american-popular-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2017\/06\/bill-cosby-and-american-popular-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Cosby and American Popular Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bill<\/a>Bill Cosby has made two distinctly different splashes in American popular culture.\u00a0 He starred in \u201cThe Cosby Show\u201d (1984-92), a sitcom that was America\u2019s most highly rated television show for five consecutive years.\u00a0 Then, his trial for sexual assault in the spring of 2017 became the most recent \u201ctrial of the century.\u201d\u00a0 Ironically, the immense success of the former prevented the latter from attracting the attention many had predicted.<\/p>\n

As for \u201cThe Cosby Show,\u201d it featured the Huxtables, a fictional upper middle-class African American family living in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights.\u00a0 Cliff Huxtable, played by Cosby, was a jolly obstetrician, while his wife Clair Huxtable was a successful attorney.\u00a0 The Huxtables has four daughters and one son, and although each episode had its tender tensions, they always dissipated by the end of the hour.\u00a0 \u201cThe Cosby Show\u201d was about a happy, loving ideal family, and Cliff Huxtable became the nation\u2019s fantasy father.\u00a0 When TV Guide ranked the 50 greatest dads in television history, the magazine named Cliff Huxtable \u201cThe All-Time Greatest Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the show rarely addressed race directly, it was what the show left unsaid that was important.\u00a0 Cosby and the show\u2019s producers consciously set out to \u201crecode blackness.\u201d\u00a0 They turned stereotypes upside-down by presenting a tightly-knit African American family that was affluent, had friends and neighbors of different races, and was headed by a married couple, with each member belonging to a learned profession.\u00a0 In the midst of the Reagan-Bush years, Americans took to the portrayal, and it, if only for a moment, obfuscated the nation\u2019s shoddy racist inequality.<\/p>\n

When twenty-five years later in time two dozen women claimed Cosby had drugged, sexually assaulted, and raped them, America was shocked.\u00a0 When Cosby went on trial in the spring of 2017 for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, many thought the public would be obsessed with the proceedings.\u00a0 Coverage of the trial seemed likely to equal that for celebrities such as O.J. Simpson in 1994 and Michael Jackson in 2005.\u00a0 Trials of the rich and famous, after all, have been pop cultural delights since the days of the penny dailies in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

For various reasons, the public\u2019s fascination with the Cosby trial was less than expected.\u00a0 For one thing, the trial took place in Norristown, Pennsylvania rather than Los Angeles.\u00a0 Then, too, various distracting civil suits were spinning all around the criminal trial, and Judge Steven O\u2019Neill allowed only one of thirteen willing accusers to testify that Cosby had assaulted them in the same way he had assaulted Constand.\u00a0 In the end, what could be more disappointing for a public seeking either exoneration or retribution than a mistrial?\u00a0 To this date, the identities of the jurors have remained secret, and nobody knows which or how many of the twelve thought Cosby was guilty or not guilty.<\/p>\n

Beyond all this, it seems the public and media as well could not resolve the contradiction inherent in America\u2019s \u201cGreatest Dad\u201d allegedly being a sexual predator.\u00a0 An extraordinarily successful pop cultural image from earlier in time made it difficult for Cosby\u2019s real-life trial to become a media extravaganza.\u00a0 Throughout the trial, actress Keshia Knight Pulliam accompanied Cosby into court.\u00a0 Pulliam had long since stopped being the precocious Rudy Huxtable from \u201cThe Cosby Show,\u201d but she rekindled memories of a loving family led by a wonderful father.\u00a0 One work of popular culture made it difficult for another to soar to its salacious, commercial zenith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Cosby has made two distinctly different splashes in American popular culture.\u00a0 He starred in \u201cThe Cosby Show\u201d (1984-92), a sitcom that was America\u2019s most highly rated television show for five consecutive years.\u00a0 Then, his trial for sexual assault in the spring of 2017 became the most recent \u201ctrial of the century.\u201d\u00a0 Ironically, the immense 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